'Malista, Kyrie,' and the silence had fallen again, the boat sailing strongly before the breeze, the beacon high ahead, and the moon brilliant in the sky. Eve, not daring to speak, glanced at Julian's profile as she sat beside him. He was scowling. Had she but known, he was intensely conscious of her nearness, assailed again with that now familiar ghost, the ghost of her as he had once held her angrily in his arms, soft, heavy, defenceless; and his fingers as they closed over the tiller closed as delicately as upon the remembered curves of her body; she had taken off her hat, and the scent of her hair reached him, warm, personal she was close to him, soft, fragrant, silent indeed, but mysteriously alive; the desire to touch her grew, like the desire of thirst; life seemed to envelop him with a strange completeness. Still a horror held him back: was it Eve, the child to whom he had been brotherly? or Eve, the woman? but in spite of his revulsion--for it was not his habit to control his desires--he changed the tiller to the other hand, and his free arm fell round her shoulders; he felt her instant yielding, her movement nearer towards him, her shortened breath, the falling back of her head; he knew that her eyes were shut; his fingers moulded themselves lingeringly round her throat; she slipped still lower within the circle of his arm, and his hand, almost involuntarily, trembled over the softness of her breast. PART III--APHROS I In the large class-room of the school-house the dejected group of Greek officials sat among the hideous yellow desks and benches of the school-children of Aphros. Passion and indignation had spent themselves fruitlessly during the preceding evening and night. To do the islanders justice, the Greeks had not been treated with incivility. But all demands for an interview with the highest authority were met not only with a polite reply that the highest authority had not yet arrived upon the island, but also a refusal to disclose his name. The Greek officials, having been brought from their respective lodgings to the central meeting-point of the school, had been given the run of two class-rooms, one for the men, of whom there were, in all, twenty, and one for the women, of whom there were only six. They were told that they might communicate, but that armed guards would be placed in both rooms. They found most comfort in gathering, the six-and-twenty of them, in the larger class-room, while the guards, in their kilted dresses, sat on chairs, two at each entrance, with suspiciously modern and efficient-looking rifles laid across their knees.